The Penn's Grove record., 1887-11-05
A VERY SINGULAR RIVER.
An Anomaly In Naturo--But Little
Changed Since the Day of Its
Birth.

As 1 said, 1 know not what to call
this S%aguenay. Rivers have banks.
but it has none; for lofty and preclp-
itous cliffs, mountains Of rock, preci-
pices that rise 1000 feet sheer upward
from the tide and beetling c~rags-these
cannot, without misuse of language,
be called river banks. Nor is it fit to
call 1t a stream, for a stream Is a line
OF flowing water smaller than a river,
and the Saguenay is from n and a
half to two miles wide, and from 400
to 1000 feet in depth, and all this
monstrous depth Of water Is in mo-
ton. Nor is it an outlet merely, for
into 1t flows the surplus water of
Lake st. John. But this lake is
shallow, not deep. and but little
more than half the length of the
Saguenay, and hence its dowage, large
as it is, is but a 1.-THE, nay, only a
hundredth part Of what the latter
holds and pours into the st. Lawrence
daily. Hence, if we call the Sague-
nay a river, it is not because that
word describes it or is a proper title
10 1t, but because of its strange char
acteristics. 1t stands an anomaly In
nature, and there is no better name to
give it than TO call it a river.
Its waters are colored, mol is their
color like to any other river l have
ever seen. They have been called
black by many writers who would have
written Of them, but they are not
black, but rather a transparent brown,
like as common water is when
looked at through a smoked glass. l
| say transparent, for they are very pure
and clear. and, dark as they are, the
eye sees deeply and easily into them.
A white stone or piece of tin can be
perceived at a great depth-as deeply
down as they might be in the waters
of the Horizon, which l have often
thought were the purest and cleanest
in the world. Moreover. the SUM-
beams penetrate its dark brown cur
rents easily, and the long lances of
light shot into the brown depths by
the solar rays look as the sunlight looks
when shining through the~ stained
windows Of great cathedrals.
Whence its waters get this strange
quality, this indescribably gloomy and
sinister tinge, none can say, and sa-
wants do not v pretend to guess.
lAOA ull bho SutlChl5 whiCu LOW lubo IL
are mountain streams and crystalline,
and the contributions of the sea which
the tiGal lift pours into it are clear
and blue of tint. Nor a it come
from any colorlng matter released by
natures chemistry acting upon It's
rocky walls and bottom, for the ma
ture of these is known, and plain
granite quartz and gneiss are the DOM
inant structures. But whatever be
the cause Of it, the color Of its
waters is, as l have described, a
brown, with almost a purple tinge,
and has to the eye, seen from a dis
lance, a most grewsome look, gloomy
and sinister, as il it came from some
other world than ours, whose waters,
unless discolored from causes diseov- \
cradle to US, are pure and sparkling.
Imagine, now, a vast volume of this
strange looking water, two miles In
width, 1000 feet Ia depth, pouring out
between a monstrous opening between
contiguous mountains, made by some
mighty throe of nature, Travelling in
agony, to bring forth an awful birth;
an opening which is not simply a rent
made through a lofty range, but as if
a long, high ridge of primeyal rock
rock old as the beginning of the world
running north and south, had been
split apart along Its entire length of
forty miles, exactly in the centre, and
the two halves wedged violently apart
until the Jagged, precipitous, cavern
GUS sides stood two miles asunder, and
through this tremendous opening,
through the very centre of this huge
ridge of rock, a vast, deep, almost
fathomless volume of gloomy colored
water began to flow, and you have in
your mind fairly good picture of what
the Saguenay was at Its birth, and
what it is to-day.
For of all rivers on the globe this,
from necessity. has changed the least.
Here and there the frost and heat,
the SHOWS and rams Of 10000 years
have worn down the sharp edges and
rounded the flinty verge of o%verhang-
ing ~preclpices; here and there the wash
and wear Of centuries have deposited
so much of soil that trees can lind a
fOothold, but save this all is to-day on
either hand. as you sail up its darkling
tide, as it was when first born in ma
lures darkest hour and steruest agony,
Its gloomy currents began to boil and
whirl and flow. Every other river on
the face Of the earth has changed its
banks and bed, but this strange river
has changed not at all, and cannot
change until the end of time.